by J. D. Horn
Alice caught her breath, and Marceline gave her a sly smile. It had happened the day the levees fell, the day of Alice’s first encounter with Babau Jean. Fleur had projected herself into Nicholas’s study, and Alice had indeed noticed the reflection of a beam of light off the buckle on Fleur’s shoe. It should have been impossible, as Fleur wasn’t truly there. The incident had long since passed from Alice’s memory. To be reminded of it all these years later, by someone who’d somehow gained access to a private moment, took her breath away.
“Oh, ma chère fille, don’t be surprised. New Orleans was groomed to act as the stage of magic, and you were groomed as well. From here to the asylum on Sinclair. To the Dreaming Road and back again. The Dark Man has watched over you ever since the day your mother dedicated you to His service. Did you really think a mere servitor spirit would be capable of freeing you unless he had the help of a greater power working behind the scenes? A few more days on the Dreaming Road, and this conversation wouldn’t have been necessary. Only you weren’t quite baked before your nanny came to fetch you. I suspect He wants you to choose Him as an act of free will. Perhaps your doing so is a requisite of His plan, or perhaps it simply plays to His sense of pageantry. After all, darkness has always had a penchant for the romantic gesture.”
“Astrid dedicated me to His service?”
“She did, but not entirely alone. Astrid worked under His guidance. He chose you, ma petite, as la Pucelle de Nouvelle Orléans, our new Joan of Arc. It’s your destiny.”
Again with the destiny. “There’s a big difference between fate and manipulation.”
Marceline laughed. “Not when the entity that’s pulling the strings is capable of shredding the fabric of reality. You are the maiden knight, born and bred to lead an army. An army you encountered on the Dreaming Road.”
“The shadows,” Evangeline said, turning on her, looking at Alice as if she were a dangerous stranger.
“Demons,” Marceline corrected her. “Not the kind they”—she gave a quick nod toward the cathedral—“talk about. The Dreaming Road was never an escape, nor was it intended as a trap. It’s a kind of factory, or perhaps refinery is the better term, that burns away a witch’s humanity, leaving nothing more than a sentient, remorseless power.
“The Dark Man has done us a tremendous service, though. Your army might prove to be unnecessary. Through His splendid works He has created an alternative to a great sacrifice. There is a much simpler, less devastating way to open the gates and make way for the King if you’re willing to consider it.”
“I’m not sure—”
“How?” Evangeline spoke over her. “How can we save Luc?”
“The gates.” Marceline raised her hands and gestured around the square. “They are no longer out here.” She drew near and caught Alice’s hand in her left and Evangeline’s in her right. She tugged them both down as she leaned in. “The voudouienne,” she whispered, “has taken the seven wounds into herself. All you have to do to open the gates is kill the Perrault woman.”
TWENTY-FOUR
The faces in the window popped in and out of view, one moment nothing more than a flat sigil painted on a pane, the next an intelligence studying Alice with a level of wariness that matched her own. They, Alice sensed, were questioning her intentions for coming. Alice wondered at the same thing.
The interior of the shop was dark, and a sign reading “Fermé” hung in the door. Alice had come to get a glimpse of Lisette, to see her moving through her own world, so she could gain a sense of Lisette as a person rather than as the simple, expendable cipher described by Marceline. It was just as well Lisette Perrault wasn’t there. Heaven only knew what she might have done had she spotted Alice stalking her.
Alice had left Evangeline and Marceline in Jackson Square, Evangeline kneeling before the child-crone, grasping her small hands and explaining to her that they weren’t going to allow any harm to come to Lisette Perrault in much the same tone Daniel might have used to explain why a young Alice couldn’t have ice cream for breakfast. Evangeline’s admonition had fallen on deaf ears. Marceline had ignored her niece, looking over Evangeline’s shoulder to regard Alice with a questioning gaze.
A life for a life. That was the deal Fleur had made to save Lucy, and it was the same proposal the infernal creature was now offering her. A vague, perhaps paranoid suspicion began to gnaw at the edges of Alice’s mind. Could Fleur have been influenced to resurrect Lucy for this very purpose? So that Alice might one day be given a sense of precedence?
Lisette Perrault was a stranger to Alice, but Luc was family. Alice felt sure that to Marceline the trade would seem irresistible. To have Luc returned to them, flesh and blood and spirit, at the low cost of the erasure of a woman to whom Alice owed no loyalty.
Alice had to hand it to Marceline. In many ways her plan approached perfection.
The witch had either been bestowed her current form as a powerless, pitiable child, perhaps as a joke or punishment, or burned through the last of her power to assume it. Her sisters were gone, reduced to ash. She was alone and helpless. In her present state only a heart carved from stone could resist feeling at least a modicum of sympathy for her. Looking into the waif’s eyes, it was almost possible to forget that Marceline and her sisters had conspired with Celestin to sacrifice a good portion of the region’s witches. Almost.
But Marceline was trying too hard to win Alice to her cause, with her composite message of “You’re special. You’re powerful. You have been chosen.” The subtext being that Alice could do as she wished without guilt or fear of recrimination. Marceline had lost all, but Alice could rebuild her family, rebuild her life.
All it would take was murdering the woman who’d defeated Celestin.
The woman who’d prevented Marceline and her sisters from collecting their due.
Alice laughed, her laughter causing the spirit faces to spark briefly to life.
Marceline had an agenda, no doubt about that.
Only Alice wouldn’t play her game. She wouldn’t bring Luc back.
For years, Alice had wondered what Luc would have become, considered who he might have been to her, if he hadn’t been murdered. Her heart had tried to whitewash his character, to smooth away his sharp edges by lingering on the outings to City Park and the zoo, but Luc the big brother was only a sliver of a more complicated man.
Luc had been no innocent. He’d allowed himself to get caught up in Celestin’s scheme to humiliate and kill Nicholas, related in equal measure to Celestin’s search for the damnable The Book of the Unwinding and to his hunger for revenge against Nicholas for having wrested control of the Chanticleers from him.
Luc had hungered for power and been willing to kill to get it. He’d wanted to be in control at all costs.
He would have sacrificed her and Evangeline to be King, no question.
He was just like Nicholas, and like Celestin, too.
After all, blood will tell.
TWENTY-FIVE
“Cette putaine, Madame John,” Marceline said, gazing up at the ceramic Calle del Maine placard affixed to the drab olive and cream two-story structure known as Madame John’s Legacy, one of the few remaining examples of Louisiana Creole architecture in the Quarter. The old witch had insisted on coming here after they parted ways with Alice—or rather after Alice parted ways with them. “Elle n’avait jamais existé de vrai.” Evangeline didn’t respond, prompting, it seemed, Marceline to assume she hadn’t understood.
“She never existed. Madame John. They got the name from a story.” Marceline placed her palm flat against the lower floor’s cream-colored masonry wall. “I used to know the name of the owner, the man who had these old walls built. But now it’s forgotten. Poof. Like so many other tidbits I’ve lost over the centuries. I do remember another house stood on this spot when my sisters and I first arrived here. The owner of the earlier house was a Francois Marin.” She gave Evangeline a sly smile. “A relative?” she said with a shrug. “I won’t avow one way or
the other, but I will point out a portion of the original Marin house is said to have been incorporated into a second structure that was later built on this same spot. That interim building was almost completely destroyed by the great fire of 1788, but the remaining portion of it was, in turn, incorporated into the current structure—and this house survived the great fire of 1794 unscathed. It’s almost as if a residual magic remained to protect the house. Or at least the part of it that was once owned by a Marin.
“It was kind of you to take me in,” Marceline said, changing the subject abruptly and without taking her eyes off the house. “I, a person you’ve long feared and despised. It was kind of you to feed me and give me shelter.”
“It was nothing,” Evangeline said, though in fact it had taken a great effort to divorce the murderous witch from the needy child.
“A nothing for which I once sold my soul. You are,” she said, looking back, “a kind woman. I’m sorry you’re kind. It will make what is to come harder for you.”
“We aren’t going to harm Lisette Perrault.”
“You reject action. You will watch many others die because of your inaction. Either way, blood will be on your hands. But you do have a choice as to how much.”
Evangeline wanted to change the topic, and she jumped to the first question that came to mind. “Why did you want to come here?”
“In truth,” Marceline said, turning her attention back to Madame John’s Legacy, “it was partly nostalgia. Visiting the square has left me feeling sentimental.”
“Yeah, public executions and pralines. Good times. Why else?”
“I wanted to make a point.” She went up on tiptoe and touched the plaque. “This house is old, ancient by the standards of this country. But before this house, there was another house here, one that stood for decades before my sisters and I arrived on these shores.”
“Yes?”
“You’ve long believed us to be the instigators of this little drama, the ‘first cause’ of your unhappiness, but there were forces at work long before we left Europe. My sisters and I were mere links in a chain forged long ago, before we stumbled on frostbitten feet through frozen pines into a darkened vale, perhaps even before this ‘vale of tears’”—she raised a hand and gestured widely around the scene—“was fished out of the abyss.”
“Poetic, but that doesn’t absolve you of your sins.”
“I’m not seeking absolution.” She looked up at Evangeline, a crone’s resolution showing through a child’s eyes. “At least not for myself. I only want to help ease your conscience when the time comes.”
“I’m not going—”
“Oui, je sais, je sais,” Marceline said. “You won’t lay a finger on la voudouienne. I’m not speaking of La Perrault’s demise. I’m speaking of the future, and how one day you might look back and wonder if you should have done more. More to save me. More to save yourself.” She reached out her hand. “I know you brought it. Show it to me.”
There was no reason for Evangeline to pretend she didn’t know what her aunt was referring to. She slipped her finger into the too-small pocket of her jeans and pulled out the chain her mother had forged. She held it up, contemplating its ugly medallion, engraved with markings that resembled bird tracks in sandy soil, and the open clasp that might as well be the fangs of a venomous snake. Evangeline held it out to Marceline, but she did not accept it. Instead, she took a step back.
Evangeline felt an energy begin to pulse through her skin, and the necklace changed once again into the exquisite collection of emeralds and diamonds.
“Polarities of the same energy,” Marceline said again.
“What is special about these stones?”
“The diamonds are crystallized power. Why the emeralds are special is a bit more complicated. It begins with Thoth.”
“Thoth, the Egyptian god?”
“Yes, Thoth was a big shot. He was thought to have devised the calculations necessary to build the universe, and every science and art required for the creation of civilization. He was the god of writing, the creator of the sacred symbols that eventually developed into our modern alphabets. ‘In the beginning was the word,’ after all. The occultists hold he created twelve tablets, but—”
“Wait, let me guess. There are really only seven.”
Marceline nodded. “Each tablet not only records one of the seven principles of magic, but embodies that principle.
“All is mind.
“All is vibrational energy.
“There is no duality, only polarity.
“Between each polarity, a rhythm measures movement.
“In all matters, cause and effect are joined; coincidence does not exist.
“The essential force manifests its polarities as gender; feminine and masculine are in all.
“As above so below.
“Each of these seven principles is inscribed above its corresponding gate, engraved, if you will, above its proper ‘wound.’ The seven tablets are made of emerald. For centuries occultists, alchemists, kabbalists, and magicians have devoted their entire lives to the search for the emerald tablets of Thoth. You hold those tablets in your hand now. They are the emeralds in that very necklace.”
“I’m sorry. I know at this point it must seem like I’m being obstinate, but I’m having a really hard time believing they were created by an ancient Egyptian god.”
Marceline shrugged. “Some claim Thoth wasn’t a god, that he was a man.”
“That sounds a bit more—”
“A man who escaped the destruction of Atlantis—”
“Wait—”
“—and death to become a god,” she finished, then looked at Evangeline with an incredulity that likely matched her own. “With all you have experienced, is the thought of this Thoth personage achieving immortality, and perhaps even divinity, so much to swallow? After all, this is exactly what the Dark Man is offering you—fall as a witch, rise as a god.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“You came into the world for this very moment. You may think you understand what motivates you and others, but I can assure you there has always been a guiding hand. Even this necklace.” She pointed at it. “The massacre the night of Celestin’s ball. Celestin put his scheme into play, believing himself to be its master, but the massacre had a hidden purpose—to create enough energy to reunite the two polarities of the necklace in the common world.”
“If I hadn’t asked you for the necklace . . .”
“The Dark Man would have found another way, another unwitting accomplice.”
“This hidden agenda. What is it?”
Marceline laughed. “I can’t speak to what is in the Dark Man’s heart. It would be like a thought trying to describe the mind that holds it. He isn’t of this world, but this world is of Him. I play my role as given me, and you must do the same.”
“My Queen, my whore,” Reverend Bill’s voice called out from the end of the block.
“Oh, no,” Evangeline said to herself. She pointed at him and called back, “Now is not the time, Bill.”
But still the old man wove and wobbled along the sidewalk, coming closer.
Marceline continued as if a drunk weren’t tottering along toward them. “You must accept your role as Queen, ma chère. You must willingly put on the necklace Mireille’s husband once forced on you.” The corner of her mouth curled up. “For it is written.”
“Written by whom?”
“Theodosius, of course. It was he who created the gospel.”
“You mean The Book of the Unwinding?”
“They are one, of course, Theodosius and the Dark Man,” Marceline continued as if she hadn’t heard Evangeline’s question. “The mad monk was how the Dark Man chose to incarnate Himself in the common world. Once. He has come many times.”
Marceline lowered her head as Reverend Bill drew near. “You recognized Him, once. The night of the massacre, when I helped trigger your first transformation. You sought Him out. You flew to His side.
”
The old man in the dirty coat knelt before them, his shiny pate surrounded by a fringe of white hair like a monk’s tonsure. “My Queen. My whore.” He paused, looking up at her with wild eyes that had peered into the sea of absolute, unbounded potentiality that lay beyond this reality. A flash of repressed memory flared up within her. As Celestin’s ball descended into absolute chaos, she had caught hold of Hugo and carried him to safety, but then she’d carried on, rising up into the night sky, circling, drifting, then finally dropping down to alight at Bill’s side. The old, drunken street preacher had placed a gentle hand on her head. It had been his touch that changed her back to human form. “My daughter.”
“Your mother married to save herself from the Dark Man. But the man your mother married didn’t sire you. Your mother already carried the Dark Man’s seed in her. You can be the greatest Queen, ma chère, because you are His.”
She crossed to Bill and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You must not trust your lover, this Boudreau fellow. He came to you that night at the old amusement park for a purpose that had nothing to do with love. All of the Boudreaus are executioners. Had you chosen that night to claim the power that is rightfully yours, to accept your role as Queen, he would have murdered you . . . or died trying.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Marceline gave a small shrug. “I never expected you to. Go ahead, then. Ask the man yourself.” The air around the two roiled, and Marceline and Reverend Bill, her aunt and her father, disappeared, folding back in on themselves until they were gone.
TWENTY-SIX
Lisette and Manon arrived at the baby’s room in the neonatal unit to find a doctor and two nurses leaning over the incubator. For a single horrifying moment Lisette was certain Joy had slipped away from them, but then the black-eyed nurse caught sight of the two of them standing in the doorway.